Mets swept and have home opener postponed in what's been a lost week
Mets swept and have home opener postponed in what's been a lost week
New York's pitching woes continue as they are swept by the Brewers after a walk-off home run. Plus, why the vibes seem to be off for this team – for now.
What’s Up with the Mets? ⚾️
The Mets were swept by the Brewers following a 7-6 loss in Milwaukee on Wednesday afternoon (box)
1B Pete Alonso went 2-for-4 with two home runs (2, 3) and four RBI in the loss
LHP David Peterson struggled to keep runners off base again, allowing five earned runs and 10 base runners in four innings pitched
RHP Adam Ottavino served up a walk-off home run to Garrett Mitchell to lead off the bottom of the 9th inning
C Omar Narváez left Wednesday’s game early following a calf injury
Mets top prospect Francisco Álvarez will reportedly be in New York in case the club needs to activate him on Friday (MMO)
New York’s home opener, scheduled for this afternoon, was postponed due to inclement weather and will take place on Friday instead
The Mets are under .500 for the first time since October 3, 2021 – 551 days ago
Today’s Game 🗓
The Mets are off on Thursday before starting a three-game series vs the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on Friday night.
The vibes – for now, anyways – are off for the Mets ✍🏻
I don’t know what it is, but something just doesn’t feel right with this baseball team.
This isn’t even a reaction to the last three games in which the Mets saw themselves get outscored 26-6 in a three-game sweep at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers, though that certainly reinforces the feeling.
I commented on Twitter about this earlier in the week, but I just have not felt as locked in with the Mets over the first week of this season the way I usually am. I haven’t been able to put my finger on the specific “why” of it all, but it appeared in the replies that I was not the only one.
Despite picking the club to win 96 games in our preseason predictions on this very newsletter one week ago today, I didn’t feel the normal zest for Opening Day that I have every other year of my adult life. And weirdly enough, that has carried over at least into the first week of the season. Even when the club started 3-1, things just felt strange for some reason.
There may be several factors at play here.
First off, I wonder if the bad taste left in the mouth of Mets fans after the conclusion of what had been a mostly magical 2022 season has not yet fully worn off. Despite five-plus months of doing some incredible un-Mets-like things – like being the most consistently good team in the entire league, for example – things ended in the same gut-punching, disappointing way that this fanbase has grown far too accustomed to. And maybe that has a lasting effect that is reaching into 2023, where even though logic tells you this team should still be good, you have to see it to believe it after how things turned out not too long ago.
I also think it’s safe to say that the shockwaves of Edwin Díaz’s season-ending injury in the World Baseball Classic, and maybe a bit of Justin Verlander’s trip to the IL mere hours before the Mets season officially began, have not yet gone away. Injuries to your team’s best players are the ultimate downer, especially when they come in such extreme and shocking ways as Díaz. And when you already see some of the Mets most important players going down before the season has even kicked off, it certainly makes it harder to feel excited for the year ahead.
There’s even probably something to the fact that there aren’t that many new faces around. While the club did add several players over the offseason, we’ve only really seen Kodai Senga and David Robertson as impact guys. Verlander has yet to throw a pitch for the club, José Quintana is out for at least three months, none of the top prospects made the roster and the lineup is essentially a carbon copy of the one the team had last year, save a depth piece or two being swapped out for another. And don’t forget about that Carlos Correa saga from over the offseason…
All of this, in addition to the club’s poor play over the last few games, has resulted in this inescapable feeling that the vibes are indeed off for this franchise. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to last forever.
Just because the excitement doesn’t seem to be there and the team finds themselves under the .500 mark since the final day of the doomed 2021 season doesn’t mean that the team can’t reverse the juju and make things a lot more fun – there are 155 games remaining, after all.
An improvement in performance would certainly help, especially on the pitching side as the club saw all three of their starters get lit up to start this week. In addition to that, seeing some faces return to the club from the injured list instead of being placed on it will also be a welcome sight. And then, of course, there’s the excitement that young players can bring.
Last season we saw an Atlanta Braves team meander through the first two months of the season before calling up a gaggle of their top young prospects in Michael Harris II, Spencer Stridings and eventually Vaughn Grissom completely changed their fortunes. It’s not coincidence that after infusing their roster with multiple exciting and high-talent youngsters that Atlanta completely turned things around and made their charge for the remainder of the year. The Mets have the opportunity to do that very thing this year, and hopefully they won’t wait until a team meeting in the beginning of June to do it.
Francisco Álvarez, the club’s top prospect, will reportedly be in New York on Friday and potentially join the active roster due to an injury to Omar Narváez. Not only would the 21-year-old catcher would provide an incredible amount of excitement to a fanbase that is still searching for some, but he would provide a major right-handed power bat to a lineup that could really use one.
There’s also Brett Baty, who should have made the Opening Day roster to begin with, still sitting there in Triple-A. After posting an .885 OPS in spring, Baty started his minor league season as a man on a mission, hitting .400/.471/.867 with two home runs, a double, five RBI and two stolen bases in just 15 at-bats. Baty should easily be able to be inserted into this lineup for the struggling veteran Eduardo Escobar and be able to play close to every day while adding another much-needed injection of youth to baseball’s oldest club.
The Mets are in a strange spot to start this highly anticipated year, but it feels as if this fanbase is in an even stranger one right now. The games have been weird, the buzz has not been the same, and the vibes have been off.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Around the League 🚩
Cardinals rookie OF Jordan Walker clubbed the first home run of his major league career in the club’s 5-2 loss to the Braves
The Phillies fell to a 1-5 record following their series loss to the Yankees
Former Mets RHP Jacob deGrom bounced back from his rough Opening Day start, striking out 11 in the Rangers’ 5-2 win over the Orioles
The undefeated Rays have won their first six games of the season by at least four runs each, the longest such streak by an MLB team since the 1884 St. Louis Maroons
The Guardians outlasted the A’s in extra innings in Oakland to improve to 5-2